Google Trends Features ASCII Art Of 9/11

A reader tipped us off to how ASCII art of an airplane is showing up in the number two position at Google Trends. When we first looked ourselves, we thought the image was that of an airplane approaching a landing strip. But a reader suggests it represents a far more disturbing scene, that of an airplane crashing into New York’s former World Trade Center towers on 9/11.

The ASCII image is this ✈ ▌▌. Below, how it appeared on Google Trends:

The “Hotness” level is “Volcanic,” which is hottest level Google Hot Trends can see. The related searches include trends, google trends, bematech, frigorific, google analytic and the geographic source seems to be from Sacramento, CA – at least according to Google’s details. There is currently related no news, blogs or web results for this “search term,” if you will.

This is not the first time we have seen issues with disturbing ASCII art hitting Google Trends. We spotted a swastika in Google trends back in July of this year. Google quickly removed the result and sent us a statement that said it was purely algorithmic and a spike in searches based on it being posted in a forum, caused it to show up in Google Hot Trends.